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Art

The Second Word V: On Images and Art, Part 3

The Failure of the Church Yet a third factor played an important role in this historical development, in addition to the imperial adoption of icons and the rise of the icons of the holy man. Brown writes: "The great Christian basilicas of the previous centuries tended to stand empty, except…

by James B. JordanSeptember 4, 1998
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Biblical Horizons

Patriarchal Dominion

The three large patriarchal narratives of Genesis concern the three aspects of the cosmos: matter, space, and time. Over these three is man given dominion. Lucifer was originally appointed to train man in this dominion, but he chose to lead man into rebellion instead. Thus, the Angel of Yahweh replaced…

by James B. JordanAugust 4, 1998
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Biblical Horizons

The Case Against Western Civilization, Part 6

Part 6: Living in a Dying World (continued) The "Trivium" (continued) The five stages of education are simply the five stages of the covenant as God administers it in human life and history, and in the liturgy of covenant renewal: First, God announces Himself. "I am Yahweh Your God." He…

by James B. JordanAugust 4, 1998
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Biblical Studies

Re-creation in the Ascension Offering

The following essay is tentative and exploratory, offered for your consideration. It seems to me that the ritual of the Ascension Offering (incorrectly translated as Burnt Offering) of Leviticus 1 is a symbolic recapitulation of Genesis 1, which thereby portrays the sacrificial ritual as way of moving from a fallen…

by James B. JordanJuly 4, 1998
Biblical Horizons

The Framework Hypothesis: A Gnostic Heresy

Just as the vast majority of evangelical Christians in America today are Arminian and Baptist, so the vast majority do not believe in a creation around 4000 BC. I don’t expect any of these three situations to change anytime soon. Powerful presuppositions are at work in all three instances, along…

by James B. JordanJuly 4, 1998
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Art

The Second Word V: On Images and Art, Part 2

The Iconoclastic Controversy Continuing Pagan Influence How did images creep in? To begin with, there was in the post-Constantinian Church a concerted effort on the part of the semi-pagans to interpret Christianity in essentially pantheistic terms. The heretics put God and man on a continuum of "being," so that God…

by James B. JordanJuly 4, 1998

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Like a Young Kid

On his way to visit a pleasing woman in Timnah, Samson is attacked by a lion (Judges 14). He defeats the lion, tearing it “like a young goat,” and then heads on to visit the lady. Does tearing a lion “like a young goat” mean tearing a lion “easily”? Is…

October 2, 2014

Jugation and Hierarchy

I summarize and interact with more of Naphtali Meshel’s The “Grammar” of Sacrifice at the Trinity House site , examining his concepts of “jugation” and “hierarchy” in “P.”

October 1, 2014

Epic Tetris

“It’s a very big, epic sci-fi movie,” says Larry Kasanoff of Threshold Entertainment. He’s talking about a movie based on Tetris, the game of falling geometric shapes. The movie is going to be much, much more than geometry. We’re going to learn that “‘Tetris’ is the teeny tip of an…

October 1, 2014

Evangelical Atheism

John Gray’s TNR review of Richard Dawkins’s An Appetite for Wonder is the very definition of withering. It should be read in full. As a public service, a few of the juicier quotations: “No two minds could be less alike than those of the great nineteenth-century scientist [i.e., Darwin] and…

October 1, 2014

Engaging John, Engaging One Another

The Paradosis Center of John Brown University put on an ecumenical conference on the gospel of John last week. I posted a brief report on the event on the Trinity House site .

September 30, 2014

Narrow, Repetitive Road

The TLS reviewer says that Richard Flannagan aspires to poetry, and fails dismally, in his Man Booker nominated The Narrow Road to the Deep North . “The Narrow Road to the Deep North confuses poetry, the higher register, with the trope of repetition - and it is fatal. . .…

September 30, 2014

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